


(S)ame (O)ld (S)ong

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [53]
Category: Permanent Record (1988)
Genre: BBW, Bands, Caring, Crying, Depression, Dogstar (veiled), Dominatrix, Doubt, F/M, Falling In Love, Fat Shaming, First Kiss, First Love, First Time, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Grief/Mourning, Groupies, High Heels, High School, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Insecurity, Leather, Lip-synching, Loss of Virginity, Love, Love Confessions, Love Stories, Musicians, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Overweight, Restaurants, Rock Stars, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Shopping, Suicidal Thoughts, Theft, Virginity, Weight Issues, singers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24862963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: When a record company steals the demo I sent in and tries to pass it off as the latest release of their top selling star, a far slimmer and more attractive singer, a session musician named Chris Townsend steps in and tries to makes sure that I am okay. I soon learn that Chris has been mindful ever since he lost his best friend to suicide years before in High School.While Chris continues to stay around me, I find myself worrying he is only sticking around to make sure that I don't hurt myself and not because he genuinely likes me. After he invites me onstage to perform with his band 'Serious,' however I learn that my fears are unfounded and neither of us need to worry about our relationship turning out to be the same old song.
Relationships: Chris Townsend & David Sinclair (Permanent Record), Chris Townsend (Permanent Record)/Me, Chris Townsend/M.G. (Permanent Record)
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [53]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Kudos: 3





	(S)ame (O)ld (S)ong

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to work on the second last chapter to my Matrix fic but Permanent Record skipped ahead.
> 
> Get it...skipping record...
> 
> I know, pretty bad.
> 
> I read an interview with Keanu where he said he wasn't pleased with Permanent Record; That he was pissed off that the critics thought he had given such a good performance in it. I love you for that, Keanu. That, even though the critics loved it, you were upset because you thought the integrity of the film had been compromised. Not sure what you think about it now, but I'm tickled pink by your twentysomething self and his bold and refreshing anger at a job well done in a film he thought wasn't well done. ;) <3
> 
> I'm a singer here. I *can* carry a tune. I can also drop it sometimes. :/
> 
> Inspired in part by Martha Wash and Loleatta Holloway whose voices were stolen by other acts. Marky Mark fixed that with Holloway. But I can tell Marky Mark and Keanu Reeves apart. Unlike two cops whose interrogations go wrong.

"It's my voice but it _isn't_ me."

The secretary behind the desk at L8 Nite Records was staring at me as if she was torn between not giving a damn and calling the police, whose number it seemed was likely on speed dial, given the suprisingly seedy atmosphere of the studio.

I started to sing a bit, trying to prove my point that it was me, a fat, plain and brown haired nobody, on Amy Starz latest single and not the thin, beautiful, raven-haired songstress herself. At least, I _thought_ she was a songstress. After hearing my voice on the radio, on a song being credited to her, I had begun to wonder which songs she released actually featured her vocals. There were rumors flying around that that famous pop duo Milli Vanilli didn't sing on their songs, after all. And over in Europe it was a common practice to hire more photogenic faces to front for other not so attractive singers.

I guessed, I fit into that latter category.

The secretary was still looking at me with indifference. Only her hand was slowly crawling towards the phone.

"Oh please don't!" I literally cried. "No, no, no!"

I was sobbing when I felt somebody coming up behind me.

"Look is there a problem here, Vanessa?" the stranger asked the secretary and I turned to find a tall, handsome man in his early twenties standing by my side. He had shaggy, dark brown hair, eyes the same color but of a lighter shade and full lips. Now my humiliation was complete: a boy I found attractive was about to witness my large body being hauled away to prison.

"This girl, along with a _thousand_ other weirdos this week, is claiming to have sung on 'Hey, Baby, is This Love?'" the secretary smirked. "I was just about to call security and have her thrown out."

Oddly enough this made me feel slightly better; being dragged out by a lousy security guard was preferable to a trip to the New York City jailhouse, no matter what Elvis Presley had sung.

"Another one, huh?" he asked with a exasperated sigh which seemed a little too overdone to be genuine.

"Yeah."

"Look, I'll show her the door," the handsome, dark haired lad was saying as he grabbed my elbows and I started to actively dislike him instead of finding him so darn cute.

" _Please_ ," Vanessa exclaimed with a yawn and turned back to painting her two inch nails a bright shade of crimson.

"Come on," the guy said, pulling me towards the door and the long flight of stairs I had just climbed in order to confront the studio execs I had never even been given the chance to so much as throw a single accusation at.

"Let me _go_!" I shouted at him and broke out of his hold, going down a few stairs before falling against the wall and bursting into another fit of tears.

The man stood there watching me silently before he came to stand on two steps under the one I was currently weeping on. Now we were virtually standing eye to eye. We were also a little too close, making me all the more uncomfortable. "Look," he said. "I wasn't really gonna throw you out. I just didn't want Vanessa to call in Gary. You thought he'd be better than the cops, right?"

I nodded, gazing into his kind eyes.

"Wrong. Gary makes the cops look like the Marx Brothers."

I looked back at the door and blinked as I turned back to stare down at the stair above my own. I thought of some girl singing with my voice and how I couldn't even get to the men in charge to complain and receive an apology and proper restitution. I thought of how I had been struggling to make it and I had in a way...but one which just reminded me that I was too fat and unattractive to make it as a singer myself.

"I'd be better off dead," I said more to myself than to the stranger standing in front of me.

I felt his hands gripping my upperarms almost angrily then. "Don't say that!" he shouted. "Don't you ever fucking say that!"

I started to cry again from the loudness of his voice and the urgency of his eyes. "Sorry," he apologized, hugging me suddenly even though we had met all of two seconds ago. "I just...that's nothing to even _joke_ about."

"I'm sorry," I apologized too.

He backed away and looked into my eyes. "Hi Sorry. I'm Chris."

I was startled to hear a laugh coming out of me. "You can call me _Erin_ ," I told him.

"Erin, can I buy you a coffee or a soda or something?"  
I'm sure my eyes widened at first but I found a yes escaping as quickly as my laugh had.

* * *

Over a Coke, I learned that Chris Townsend had every reason to be upset at my comment about death in the stairway at L8 Nite Records. In High School, he had been in a band with his best friend, a boy named David Sinclair. David seemed to have everything going for him: looks, talent, brains and the grades to go along with them. Only for some reason they never found out, David hadn't seen it quite that way. One night at a party, the teen had thrown himself off of a cliff, killing himself in the process, which had been his intent all along. Chris, whom had been there when David fell, had received what amounted to a suicide note shortly after. Chris and the rest of David's friends had been left to wonder in confusion afterwards what had driven David Sinclair to take his own life. They had never found an answer. But Chris had learned to pay attention to those around him ever since; always watching in guilt for signs that someone else might feel the urge to do the same.

"I'll be okay," I told him, patting his arm as he sat across the table at the half crowded restaurant with me.

"Are you sure?" Chris asked skeptically.

"Well maybe not _completely_ ," I muttered. "I still want the credit for that song...but I won't kill myself over it."

"That's good," the man commented.

I sighed, trying to find the strength to tell Chris Townsend something I thought he might need to hear.

"What is it?" he asked, telling that I had something else that I wanted to say.

"I have thought of killing myself in the past...I have OCD and depression...In grade school, I was bullied so much over my weight that I started thinking maybe dying would be better. I remember looking at the fork and knife that came with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken once and wondering if I could kill myself with them. Or if the plastic would just break before I could."

Now Chris was the one to reach across the table and grasp my arm.

"But I try not to harbor those thoughts anymore," I reassured him. "Oh they pop up once in a while. Once you let them in they are kind of hard to push out...But...now I'm just kind of curious how I'll die, you know?"

"You're curious about that?" Chris asked, interest piqued himself but kind of baffled too.

"Sure. We all come into this world, more or less, the same. Our deaths make us unique. I want to see how I make the grand exit naturally; not taking it into my own two hands and deciding it for myself. Horribly control freakish, in a way."

"Never thought of it that way," he said with that same boyish grin that was enough to melt my heart as if it were a sun and my heart was made out of nothing but wax.

Not knowing still how I was set to exit the world, that was the day that Chris Townsend, however, successfully entered my own.

* * *

Chris would come over often to my small apartment after that. I wasn't exactly sure why. We went out together a few times to see a movie or for something to eat. We also plotted to find a way to get the execs in charge of Amy Starz to admit that they had stolen the demo I had sent them with my song and vocals. Townsend had been a session musician at L8 Nite for months now while he tried to get his own band played on the radio. He already had known for quite a while the true story behind Starz's image.

"She can't sing to save her life. But she looks good on a CD cover or hanging on the walls of a teenager's bedroom," he said with a sigh. "But with a voice that sounds like a cat trying to get out of a pillowcase no DJ in their right mind would play her. On a radio, it still matters what the voice sounds like. So they find other people who can actually sing to do it for her. I never heard of them being as stupid as to knick a demo before though. It must be because the song was really strong."

I smiled in proud defeat. "I guess, that's something at least. I'm too shy to be a performer. But I can write songs pretty well. I thought if I sent in 'Hey, Baby, is This Love?' with my information I could maybe make it as a songwriter. That way nobody would see me."

"Awww but you're cute," Chris said and immediately looked embarrassed afterwards.

"Thanks," I said, equally self conscious. "But I'm also too big. People want Madonna not Fat-onna."

"You never know unless you try. Why don't you come and play with the band on Saturday," Chris offered. "We've got a gig at a club down on the corner of 53rd."

I studied the guitarist's sweet and gorgeous face. He was just being kind to me. I also feared that his recent visits to my apartment were primarily motivated by the memory of David; that Chris was just making sure that I didn't kill myself anyway despite my wish to let fate handle that for me. I wanted it to be because he liked me for _me_ and that his interest and sticking around was based on attraction. But...when people bought albums because they liked the way Amy Starz looked, could I really be sure that Chris Townsend wasn't only hanging around me because he feared the repetition of the past?

* * *

Chris took me to this second hand store he knew and helped choose out my wardrobe for me.

"I used to let David handle all of the responsibilities...I feel bad sometimes...like maybe I put too much on his shoulders," he confessed, rifling through a rack of brightly colored clothing.

I vehemently shook my head. "Weight needs volume not just one single thing. It was everything; stuff you probably didn't even know about. By the way, weight looks better in _black_."

Chris casually moved over to the darker colored fabric. "This!" he said, grinning widely and pulling out a plus sized black leather get up complete with various buckles, studs and straps.

"That belongs on a dominatrix," I scoffed.

"As Lucy Van Pelt stated in 'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown:' A person should always choose a costume which is in direct contrast to her own personality," he mused. "This about does it...a little bunny like you dressed up like a devouring lioness? Grrrrr."

He growled in approval.

Right then, I wanted to tell him that if he wanted me to tie him up and punish him until he begged for mercy I'd happily summon my inner tiger and do it.

Anything to make him happy.

Anything to make him love me as much as I had fallen in love with him.

* * *

Hesitantly, I showed up at the club Chris had given me the address to on Saturday night, wearing my kinky little outfit. He introduced me to each of the band members. They were pretty friendly and not seemingly taken back by the fact that the new friend of their leader was a chubbette and she was dressed like she was about to whip them into submission.

"I'm impressed that you actually came," he whispered into my ear as he took me over to the side of the stage. "I thought you'd keep your bones far away from the joint."

"My _big_ bones," I said.

He gazed down at me in stern dissapproval.

"You ready to fend off the groupies tonight?" one of Chris' bandmates, a man named Bob, joked to his friend.

Chris spun his head around so quickly that Captain Howdy would have been jealous. I could see him glaring at Bob.

"Groupies?" I asked.

"Yeah," Bob laughed, sitting behind his drumset. "Chris is our major draw. The girls all wait for him backstage after the show. They aren't aware of how _boring_ he really is."

"Hardy har har," Chris Townsend sounded back at him.

I watched from backstage as Chris' band 'Serious' did their set. I was nervous as anything. The feeling was becoming tangled up with jealousy, though, as I stared at the crowd and saw mostly a sea of women all staring at Chris while he played his guitar, seemingly oblivious to them. It was obvious that old Robert had been right: The girls loved Chris even if he didn't seem to reciprocate.

For the final number, the guitarist came and grabbed my arm, pulling me out on stage. "Come on," he urged.

"I'll make a fool of myself!" I protested.

"What do you think we just did?" Chris retaliated.

"You have to! The guys and I spent days learning 'Hey, Baby, Is This Love?' and Bob says he'll _kill_ you himself if you don't step up to that mic."

I looked at the microphone waiting intimidatingly for me.

"You don't really want to exit the world at the hands of an irate drummer for a second class band, do you, Erin?" Chris asked.

I raised my eyes to meet his and then walked to the microphone, as if I was a man on death row approaching a certain electrified chair. Chris stepped on to the stage behind me and I knew he wasn't going to bother making an introduction. He knew it was bad enough for me having to go up on stage at all; announcing the event would only have made it worse.

The girls in the crowd, and the few stray boys, standing out like dried up old grapes in a box of Raisin Bran, looked at me in confusion; they were already trying to figure out what the overweight girl clad in skin tight leather was doing taking the microphone when she wasn't part of the band.

Or even on the posters.

Serious started up the first few notes of the top 40 song that I had written and the crowd listened in shocked amazement as I started to sing with a voice they believed belonged to another woman.

* * *

Back at my apartment, the radio turned on to help combat my shyness at being around the man I loved alone and in my erotically charged garb, I felt both elated and anxious; like I had done well and failed horribly at the same time. "Did I do all right?" I asked Chris.

He smiled in amused understanding. "You did great. They loved you. You are just suffering the repercussions of triumph meeting your own insecurities. I know what that like: it's what I suffered after David died and I was finally forced not to hide in his shadow."

I looked up into Chris' eyes as we stood by my small little bed in my equally cramped apartment, which basically only had enough room for that same bed, a desk, a nightstand, the radio and a hotplate, thinking of David Sinclair and the scar he had left his best friend Chris to carry for the rest of his life. That was the thing about suicide: Those who committed it thought they were ending pain. Instead they only helped in its spreading, leaving everyone that loved them asking "Why?" and thinking "If only..." It was another reason why, no matter how dark my thoughts became alongside the pain, I refused to take that way out. Hurting myself was one thing; hurting somebody else was something I was not willing to do. Especially not when I was bidding my life and the world goodbye and going to meet God face to face.

Feeling bold enough after my first live performance, and seeing the fondness in Chris' soft mahogany eyes, I felt the need to voice my secret fear and desire to him.

"I want you to like me, Chris...But...I'm worried you're just staying around me, not because you are attracted to me, but because you're afraid I might kill myself like David did," I confessed.

"That's not true," Chris whispered and took my plump hand in his own large one. "Well...I have been lying to myself, saying that I'm staying around you so you won't hurt yourself...but....truth is I am honestly fucking well attracted to you, Erin."

Joy filled me at first, bright and making me higher than any drug Janis, Morrison or Hendrix had taken. Then I came hurtling down about as violently as their subsequent crashes as I fully processed his words.  
"You're ashamed of me," I whispered. "Ashamed of my weight..."

Chris looked mortified and started to shake his head as he forcefully grabbed my shoulders. "No. Yeah, I was a little scared of what the guys would say because I care for you so much and they don't have self censorship buttons and I didn't want them to act like asses and hurt your feelings. I'm just scared, though, because I do care for you. It's been a very long time since I...since I was in love with somebody. Actually, I don't think I _have_ ever been in love before."

"But I thought you said you went with that girl...M.G...the one who published the book inspired by David's death,?" I asked in confusion.

Chris laughed wryly. "That's High School. You know what it's like. You just kind of fall in together. It's more about sex and being able to say you have a girlfriend. It's what's expected more than anything else."

I frowned down at the black high heels he had chosen for me to wear too.

"You do know what it's like... _Right_?" he asked, finally realizing that his High School experience wasn't my own.

"Chris, I've never had a boyfriend. I've never even been kissed before," I informed him as I looked up and into his searching brown eyes. "High School was the same as grade school for me: bullied to the point where I felt I would always be unwanted. But it didn't matter anyway...To me I could only ever have a boyfriend I loved and I never loved any of the boys I knew when I was a teen. Sex for me isn't like it was for you and your friends...I'd have to be in love and trust the guy enough to go that far."

Chris pulled me closer towards him and my shyness was almost overpowering. I couldn't look at him as his hands found the small of my back and rested there. "Do _you_ love and trust me, Erin?" he asked.

I looked away. "You're not just asking so I'll jump into the sack with you are you, Chris Townsend? Because I am not one of those groupies that hang around backstage after the show either."

The guitarist pulled me into a kiss, passionate on his side, clumsy on mine because it was my first. As he broke it up into several smaller ones, I found both my breath and more confidence doing it. He held the back of my neck and I tried to regain my concentration past how his touch there felt so overwhelmingly good. Chris rested his forehead against mine, his hand still on the nape of my neck. "Do you love me, Erin?" he asked.

"Yes," I whispered. "I love you, Chris."

He kissed me again and we fell on to the bed together, me still in the leather and high heels and Chris Townsend soon inside of me.

* * *

Half an hour later we were still making love when the DJ suddenly earned our attention.

"Rumors have been swirling around the grapevine tonight after a performance by a band called 'Serious' that performer Amy Starz stole her current single and vocals 'Hey, Baby, is This Love?' from that band's lead female singer..."

"I'm your lead female singer?" I asked Chris as I lay flat on my back underneath him.

"Do you want to be?" Chris asked while I felt him buried deep inside of me. "I mean, I need somebody to save me from all of those groupies, after all."

Absently I heard my own voice begin to sing in the background, emanating from the radio as the truth was starting to spread about whom really was singing the song.

"I don't want to step on the other guys' toes," I said. "I weigh so much that would be pretty painful."

"Erin!" Chris reprimanded.

I smiled up at him and gently touched his cheek.

"Yes..." I whispered. "I would like that."

Chris Townsend gazed down at me as on the radio I asked "Hey, Baby, Is This Love?"

"Yes," Chris replied softly to the two mes. "Yes, it is."

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry. Couldn't resist that nod to Dogstar. I hope that didn't cheapen things too much. :/
> 
> Actually I have a bone to pick with you, Robert Mailhouse. I'm still mad that on "Days of Our Lives" you didn't go with Melissa. Yeah, I know that was the writers and not you but I can still remember the heartbreak of my 12-13 year old self as you so coldly took her off to jail. You heartless bastard. What made things worse, was that your brother on the show, Tanner, was cute with Melissa's sister Sarah. Did they put them together though? No! Fans complained that they were tired of seeing bad boys with good girls so they got rid of Sarah. And what do they do? They put Tanner with a naive girl from the backwoods whom had never been to civilization before. And then they put your character Brian with her trashy mom! Ridiculous! Absurd!
> 
> If I went to a Dogstar or Becky concert it would NOT have been to see you; it would have been for Mr. Reeves
> 
> Seriously though, Keanu, if I went to see you perform it would have been because I respected your music and it certainly wouldn't have been to flash you. Your films and music are separate to me and I wouldn't have wanted to just be there because you are an actor I fancy. It would have had to have been because I was honestly interested in your music. 
> 
> Actually, I can't think of a more painful task than having to endure music that you don't like. I'm sure that Purgatory is nothing more than sitting for eons in a waiting room where nothing but your most hateful songs are played. 
> 
> Which means that my dad is sitting there listening to Ghostbusters right now. :/


End file.
